For more than half a century, Clinton resident Bryant Mather spent his days providing expertise on concrete to the U.S. Army Crops of Engineers. His nights, however, were devoted to the pursuit of the moths of Mississippi.

The result is one of the most extensive private moth collections in the United States, much of which was donated to the Mississippi Entomological Museum at Mississippi State following Mather's retirement earlier this year.

Mather, a geologist by training, came to Mississippi in 1946 to work for the Corps of Engineers at Vicksburg. During his more than 50 years with the Corps, he became internationally known as an authority on concrete, traveling the world to provide expertise on the construction of dams and other concrete structures.

His interest in insects dates back to his youth in Baltimore, Md.

"The summer when I was 11 years old, my parents sent me to YMCA camp," Mather said. "I shared a tent with a slightly older boy who collected butterflies. I came home and told my mother I wanted to do that, so I went to the local public library and learned how to get started."

Rocks also fascinated the young man, who went on to earn his bachelor's degree and did graduate work in geology at Johns Hopkins University.

His first assignment with the Corps of Engineers was in 1941 with the Central Concrete Laboratory at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

His next assignment was in Vicksburg, and Mississippi's abundance of insects rekindled his interest in collecting.

"In 1946, there was little literature on Mississippi butterflies, so Mr. Mather began documenting them," said Richard Brown, director of the Mississippi Entomological Museum. "He and his late wife Katharine wrote the first and still the only publication covering all of Mississippi's butterflies."

After 10 years of work with butterflies, he turned to moths, the more nocturnal members of the order lepidoptera.

Many of his nights and mornings before sunrise were spent collecting moths and other insects from lights around Mississippi. The result is a collection that includes an astounding number of specimens.

"Mr. Mather accumulated more than 190,000 moths and thousands of other insects," Brown said. "He exchanged specimens with other collectors for species from other areas of the U.S. and donated many specimens to the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution, and other institutions, keeping the best and unique for his personal collection."

That collection was donated to the Mississippi Entomological Museum earlier this year. A recent inventory of the collection shows it includes almost 45,000 moths and almost 3,000 specimens of other insects.

Eight species of insects—including five moths, two butterflies, and a fishfly he discovered—are named matheri in his honor. The collection donated to MSU also contains a large number of paratypes: specimens that have been used in species descriptions by entomologists.

Collectors around the world would pay several dollars each for many of the specimens in the collection, but Brown says the data with the specimens are more valuable than the insects themselves.

"Mr. Mather has provided us with the most comprehensive set of data on Mississippi moths ever collected." he said. "This includes information about moths from areas of the state where we have not collected data."

Brown and other entomologists at the museum are busy sorting and storing the hundreds of boxes containing the Mather collection. During the course of their work, they have discovered his sense of humor.

"Someone gave him a rubber spider," Brown notes. "He dutifully labeled it as a Vicksburg specimen and placed it in a collection box containing rows of other spiders."